By opposing Ubisoft’s decision to close the servers of The Crew released in 2014, these modders are bringing to the fore the question of preserving video games in an all-online era.
The Crew is an online racing game released in 2014 published by Ubisoft which has brought together millions of players over the years. Despite a strong community of players, Ubisoft is ending the servers on March 31, 2024 and thereby signing the death warrant for the game. A decision that does not please this community of moders who are working to bring the game back to life.
Players vs. Industry
This project is led by a community of modders called The Crew Revival and currently has five people. The teams ofEurogamer were able to chat with Whammy4, one of the members of this team. We learn that this team got to work as soon as the servers were closed in December 2023, all while wanting to keep the spirit of the game:
“It’s still the same game everyone was playing before, except instead of connecting to Ubisoft’s central server, they’ll connect to ours (or a local server running on their computer if they choose to play offline) »
Modding is a practice which aims to develop modifications for published games by improving certain features, correcting bugs or changing the gameplay. Here, the whole challenge would be to be able to at least provide access to the offline single-player mode of the game before offering the online mode. Contacted by the Eurogamer teams, Ubisoft simply returned to its announcement when the servers were closed: “We announced on December 14, 2023 that after almost a decade of support, we would retire The Crew 1 on March 31, 2024 […] While we understand this may be disappointing for players, it was necessary due to server infrastructure and licensing constraints. “.
A conservation issue
This practice may provoke strong protests from players, but it remains legally accepted. Indeed, when a player buys a physical or digital video game, he now acquires a license to use the game more than the game itself. The publisher remains free to add content, fixes or, as is the case here, to withdraw it from the market. The preservation of video game heritage and Ubisoft is not the only one at fault in this game. Last April, Nintendo announced the shutdown of the Wii U and 3DS servers, cutting off major functionality from the consoles.
In France, this issue of conservation is taken very seriously by the BnF, the National Library of France, which has dedicated a public collection of video games since 1992 with a view to its conservation as video game heritage.
